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i
The Oxford
History of the
Ancient Near East
Volume II: From the End of the
Third Millennium bc to the Fall
of Babylon
z
Edited by
KAREN RADNER
NADINE MOELLER
D. T. POTTS
1
iv
1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190687571.001.0001
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
v
Contents
Preface vii
Time Chart xi
The Contributors xiii
Abbreviations xix
14. The Middle East after the Fall of Ur: Isin and Larsa (Klaus
Wagensonner) 190
15. The Middle East after the Fall of Ur: From Assur to the
Levant (Ilya Arkhipov) 310
16. The Middle East after the Fall of Ur: From Ešnunna and the
Zagros to Susa (Katrien De Graef ) 408
vi
vi Contents
Index 925
vi
Preface
This is the second volume of the Oxford History of the Ancient Near
East, which covers Egypt and Nubia, the Levant, Anatolia, Mesopotamia,
and Iran from the turn of the third to the second millennium bc and
through the first half of that millennium, broadly corresponding to the
Middle Bronze Age. The first volume (published in August 2020) closed
with the end of the Old Kingdom in Egypt and of the Akkad state in
Mesopotamia, and as we stated in its preface, future generations of schol-
ars will hopefully establish whether we should have included Egypt’s
First Intermediate Period and/or the kingdom of the Third Dynasty of
Ur in that volume. Their discussion opens the present volume, after a
chapter devoted to the absolute chronology of the first half of the second
millennium bc and the possibilities, problems, and priorities inherent in
the different sources, including historical data, archaeological finds, and
stratigraphies, and radiocarbon-dated, organic materials that need to be
correlated and synchronized across a vast geographical region from the
Nile to Iran.
In Egypt, the Middle Kingdom constituted a long-lived, and rela-
tively well-documented, state that greatly influenced the neighboring
regions in Nubia and the Levant. Further east, the political organization
of Mesopotamia and Syria after the disintegration of the kingdom of
Ur can be described as a mosaic of medium-sized, small, and single-city
states, with quickly changing alliances and several short-lived attempts to
establish larger political units; the most successful project loomed large
in Iran from which the Sukkalmah Dynasty’s power at times reached as
far as northern Syria. The availability of sources for this “warring state
vi
viii Preface
Preface ix
the analysis of hugely diverse groups of texts to the close study of material
culture such as pottery and coffin styles. Draft manuscripts were received
between August 2018 and August 2020.
In transcribing Egyptian proper nouns, we follow the conventions
of The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, edited by Ian Shaw (OUP
2004, rev. ed.). While we use hyphenation to separate the components
of Sumerian personal names with two constituent elements (e.g., Ur-
Namma) we do not do this for longer names (e.g., Ninšatapada instead
of Nin-šata-pada). We follow normal practice in marking the individual
words within Akkadian proper nouns (e.g., Dur-Yasmah-Addu, Rim-
Sin). We also mark the individual words within Elamite and Amorite
names (e.g., Tan-Ruhurater, Samsi-Addu). Whenever a person or place is
widely known by a conventional spelling, we use that (e.g., Hammurabi
instead of Hammu-rapi, Cutha instead of Kutiu). We do not use any long
vowels in proper nouns, including modern Arabic and Farsi place names.
Our work on the Oxford History of the Ancient Near East was greatly
facilitated by the fellowships awarded by the Center for Advanced
Studies of LMU Munich (CASLMU) to Nadine Moeller and Dan Potts,
which allowed us to come together in Munich in July 2016, 2017, and
2018, when the groundwork for this volume was laid. Much of the
joint editorial work on the chapters of the second volume was achieved
in our 2019 meetings in Chicago, Penjwin (Kurdish Autonomous
Region of Iraq), and Pouillon (Chalosse region, France). However, the
global COVID-19 (Sars-CoV-2) pandemic and resultant travel restric-
tions made it impossible for us to meet in 2020. Our close collabora-
tion continued, thanks to our joint GoogleDrive folders and especially
the WhatsApp group “OHANE Editors,” which came to be our most
important communication tool.
As ever, we are greatly indebted to our editor at Oxford University
Press, Stefan Vranka, who accompanied and facilitated our work on this
volume at every step. The index was prepared by Luiza Osorio Guimarães da
Silva (Chicago), who was also instrumental in harmonizing proper nouns
across chapters and volumes. At LMU Munich, we are grateful to Denise
Bolton, who language-edited several chapters; to Thomas Seidler, who
checked and consolidated the chapter bibliographies; and to Dr Andrea
x
x Preface
Time Chart
Egypt Mesopotamia Iran
Syria Iraq
The Contributors
The Contributors xv
the structure of the state. Recent publications include The state in ancient
Egypt: power, challenges and dynamics (Bloomsbury, 2019), Dynamics of
production in the ancient Near East, 1300–500 BC (Oxbow, 2016), and
Ancient Egyptian administration (Brill, 2013). He is editor-in-chief of
The Journal of Egyptian History (Brill).
Daniel T. Potts (PhD, Harvard University) is professor of Ancient
Near Eastern Archaeology and History at the Institute for the Study
of the Ancient World, New York University. A corresponding mem-
ber of the German Archaeological Institute, he has worked in Iran, the
United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Armenia, and the Kurdish
Autonomous Region of Iraq. His numerous books include The archae-
ology of Elam: formation and transformation of an ancient Iranian state
(Cambridge University Press, 2nd ed., 2015) and Nomadism in Iran: from
antiquity to the modern era (Oxford University Press, 2014).
Karen Radner (PhD, University of Vienna) holds the Alexander von
Humboldt Chair of the Ancient History of the Near and Middle East at
LMU Munich. A member of the German Archaeological Institute and
the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, her numerous books
include A short history of Babylon (Bloomsbury, 2020) and Ancient
Assyria: a very short introduction (Oxford University Press, 2015), as well
as editions of cuneiform archives from Iraq, Syria, and Turkey.
Klaus Wagensonner (PhD, University of Vienna) is postdoc-
toral associate at the Department of Near Eastern Languages and
Civilizations and the Babylonian Collection at Yale University. His
research focuses on early scholarly traditions, in particular lexical texts
from the late Uruk to Old Babylonian periods. He also investigated
scribal families of Middle Assyrian Assur. Currently, he is prepar-
ing the publication of Sumerian literary texts in the Yale Babylonian
Collection, as well as of Old Babylonian letters from Kiš in various
British and US collections.
Harco Willems (PhD, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen) is full profes-
sor of Egyptology at the Department of Archaeology of KU Leuven.
His research focuses on Old and Middle Kingdom Egypt, with social
xvi
Abbreviations
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
He caused young harmless infants to be killed;
All under two years old, their blood was spilled.
Dear parents’ tears could not his rage prevent,
Nor pity move the tyrant to repent.
7.
8.